Martians!!! Like Zombies!!!, but More Martiany
The Martians Are Due on Maple Street
When I heard that Twilight Creations would be showing of their new Martians!!! game at Origins, I was excitedly anticipating a sci-fi twist on their classic invasion game Zombies!!! Unfortunately, there isn’t quite enough twist to set this game apart from its shambling predecessors.
If you’re not familiar with the Zombies!!! family of games, they’re simple games perfect for playing with non-gamer friends (we usually have a big Zombies!!! game on Halloween night). Each player plays a human trying to escape a zombie invasion. On your turn, you draw a map tile at random and place it on the table, populating it with zombies, or zombie dogs, or zombie soldiers, or, in this case, Martians, along with helpful bullets and heart tokens. It’s essentially a race to whatever the winning tile is for the particular expansion you happen to be using, all while playing cards that hinder your opponents.
Martians!!! follows the same basic design. This doesn’t make it a bad game – if you don’t have any of the eight or so versions of Zombies!!! and prefer an alien invasion theme over a zombie plague, then Martians!!! might be the perfect game for you. But I can’t help feeling that Twilight Creations has been beating this undead horse for a few years now, so I was hoping for something a little more innovative.
Aside from cosmetic changes (you get plastic Martian minis in three poses, and plastic player figures in a few poses too), there are a few small differences. In addition to bullet and heart token, players can find and retrieve another type of token whose nature is not revealed until it is acquired. It might turn out to be a crop circle, which becomes a Martian generator. Or it might be one of three ingredients for a bomb needed to blow up the alien mothership and win the game, or even the mothership itself (note to guy running demo: Timothy McVeigh jokes? Not cool).
Martians!!! also incorporates a common house rule used to speed up Zombies!!! games. Instead of moving 1d6 each turn, players move 1d6 plus their current number of heart tokens. It’s a brilliant idea, because rolling a few 1s or 2s in a row was frustrating and not at all fun.
I was disappointed in the artwork on the map tiles. It was very dark and difficult to make out much of what was there. I thought this would an opportunity to make the game stand out from Zombies!!!, perhaps with a brighter 1950s art deco look, but instead they’re just rather dingy. It’s also hard to tell where you can and can’t move. There are white lines and grids on the tiles, and apparently you can only move into a space by crossing a white line. However, there are no lines at the edges of the tiles, so it’s tough to know exactly where you can move from tile to tile. Even our demoer seemed confused by this.
Overall, Martians!!! is based on a sound game design, though you can’t help but think they could have done more with the theme. The added twist that the players are avid video gamers who are Earth’s last chance to stop the invasion isn’t enough. If you want to learn more about Martians!!!, Zombies!!! or other Twilight Creations games, here’s the link to their official website.
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July 1st, 2009 12:13 PM
Zombies!!! sounds like a load of fun. Since there are eight versions, your (or the other Vikings) suggestions on which one to get first?
July 1st, 2009 12:54 PM
I would definitely start with the first one (there’s a helpful Amazon link in the story there, hint hint). It includes basic zombies, you run around town trying to find the helipad so you can escape.
I also really like 2, the military base. The base is fun to explore, and there are extra-tough radioactive zombies.
3 is good, located in a mall. Lets you re-enact Dawn of the Dead.
4 works best as a standalone (we’ve tried combining it with the others and it’s a little uneven). You get Zombie dogs and explore some woods looking for an old cabin. The best part is the Evil Dead premise – the win condition is finding the pages of an old demonic book and casting the proper spell in the cabin to end the zombie invasion.
5 is the university, which is good if you want yet another place to add into a massive game, and it does add “guts” tokens, which are nice but not crucial.
That’s as far as I’ve played, though I hear 6 is good because it adds sewer movement, which makes getting around town easier.
July 1st, 2009 12:58 PM
I’ll just add that combining a bunch of expansions together is really fun if you have the time and the table space. We had an epic game two Halloweens ago. You start with the basic town, but shuffle the entrance spaces for the other areas into the tile deck. Whenever someone finds one (say the gate to the military base or the door to the mall), then players can start drawing tiles from the base or mall decks. You end up with this sprawling map and players running all over, each of them going after a different win condition or trying to drag each other down.
July 1st, 2009 1:51 PM
Always wanted to try Zombies!! might have to pick that up at some point. Sounds like it has just enough dickery for Board Game Night. Nothing quite like 5-10 people trying to utterly screw each other over.
July 1st, 2009 3:38 PM
Thanks Ed. I saw the link. Waited to click on it, to be sure that’s the one to get. (Not sure how that little add works.) Looks like I can get 1 and 2 for $40. Not too shabby.
July 1st, 2009 3:40 PM
Bwahahaha! Amazon lists the Zombies!!! Bag O’ Zombies for $94.14! I know it must be a typo; it is still HIlarious.
July 1st, 2009 5:58 PM
If y’all buy amazon stuff by clicking through a link on Robot Viking (regardless of what you buy, whether it’s the item in the link or not), I get like a 4 percent commission. I make roughly enough to buy a paperback novel there each month, which ain’t much but beats a sharp stick in the eye.
July 2nd, 2009 12:11 PM
I knew about the comission that comes back to Robot Viking; I didn’t know if you choose what to put there, or if it is some type of window that will put stuff there based on the words used in the post.
July 2nd, 2009 1:03 PM
I put those links in manually myself.
July 3rd, 2009 3:48 AM
i did always love Zombies!!! it’s a great game. that’s a bummer that Martians!!! isn’t too different, though.
July 4th, 2009 3:38 AM
The fact that you put the links there makes me respect you all the more, Ed. I suck at HTML and web design.